calling all travel, italy and food blogger friends

We've received a bunch of requests lately for blog link exchanges. It's taken us a little while to get our act in gear, but we're finally ready to start exchanging links!

Here's how it works:

1. Grab one of our lovely blog buttons below and place it on your site. If you absolutely, positively must use only a text link that's OK, too.
   
    
   
   
2. Be sure the image/text links to http://www.lavitaebellablog.com
3. Contact us to let us know you've added our link! We'll add you to our list pronto. In your message, be sure to let us know where we can go to grab your 125x125 button if you have one. That's the only size button we're accepting at the moment.

Our master link page won't be live until mid-June, but until then any links will appear in our sidebar.

Very important: this isn't an opportunity for free product advertising. We're only exchanging links with other bloggers we feel our ever-growing audience will love.

Easy World Traveling with Apple? I think not!

Talk about major frustration! Today we spent over 2 hours on the phone with local Apple Store employees, Apple Care and Apple Sales without finding a resolution for a major issue we are having.

The problem? We own a huge 27" iMac computer and we're bringing it to Italy with us. We bought a fantastic travel case for it and had just one thing left to take care of: getting the new power cord with the European prongs on the end. A simple call to Apple, right? WRONG.

Over and over, the Apple employees we talked to recommended the World Travel Adapter kit, which doesn't work with iMac computers. Only after we pointed this fact out did we get a lot of "Oh, your right...". Thanks, morons, for recommending a product that doesn't work and would waste my money. Seriously, are we the first people to take an iMac from the U.S. to Europe and looking for a new power cord?

If we were staying for a week, we would just buy a standard wall adapter, but because this move is permanent, we're looking for the safe, smart solution, which is simply replacing the power cord. After talking to 10 people for over 2 hours, we still don't have a resolution. How crazy is that?

We found a few generic plugs that would *probably* do the job, but as fellow Apple junkies know, your warranty is totally voided if an issue arises due to a non-Apple product. So, if our computer fried because of a generic plug we'd be out our computer.

We'll let you know if/when this issue gets solved. So much for Apple being a "world" brand...

will you still...

When you decide to pick up and move to a foreign country you get a lot of questions about your plans, particularly in regards to work/business.

I've been asked quite a few times now if I still plan to keep working on Southern Flourish. My response? Um, hello, YES! Southern Flourish is one of my great passions and despite small frustrations every now and again, I'm totally obsesed with working on it. It is my baby!

There will certainly be challenges editing it from afar, but not many more than when I was in Louisville or Philly. The beauty of digital publishing is that everything is online and your business goes where you go. It's brilliant.

Plus, Rob is working on his own (but very different) magazine project. Who knows, maybe we'll own a big publishing company soon :-)

Time for a shameless plug...haven't read Southern Flourish? Visit www.southernflourish.com.